say, “I have her too,” but Cherisse squealed dramatically. “She is cray! Audrey, didn’t she freak out on your biology class last year?”
I shifted back as Audrey started to relay Mrs. Carroll’s historic meltdown, one complete with tears and abandoning her classroom after someone sang out the lyrics to “Tiny Bubbles” during an experiment.
There was a nudge on my shoulder.
“You like?” Eph asked, sliding his notebook onto my lap and pushing his hair behind his ear.
He had sketched himself, gangly and knobby, bangs in his eyes, chin-length hair, with a name tag saying HI, MY NAME IS TALL HANDSOME HOTTIE, wearing a clearly bored expression while picking his nose.
At the bottom he’d written, in all capital letters and minus any proper punctuation or actual hashtag symbol, HASHTAG TALL HANDSOME HOTTIE ALERT.
Sometimes the sheer fact of simply knowing Ephraim O’Connor makes me feel like the luckiest girl in the whole Milky Way.
“Fuckin’ rad, yeah?” He stretched back in his chair, folding his arms behind his head.
“Language, Ephraim.” I took the drawing in, admiring how in such a quick sketch he’d managed to capture the rattiness of his Superman T-shirt and the inked-in bubble tags on the rubber rims of his checkered Vans. “It’s pretty frakking rad.”
Eph ignored my f-bomb substitution. “Pretty rad? Come on, Pen. It’s completely fucking rad.” He leaned closer, grinning. “You know I’m a tall, handsome hottie. Say it.”
I stifled a laugh, which turned into a snort, which tragically morphed into the sound I imagined a seriously constipated (and angry about it) wild boar would make.
No.
My face went cherry red. I couldn’t bear to turn around to see if the new boy had heard it.
Eph stared at me, mouth twisting. “What was that?”
I decided to pretend that that sound had not come from me. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I can’t confirm your tall, handsome hottie status. That’s Summer’s job.”
“Her name is Autumn.”
“I get all your girls mixed up,” I said, trying to remember if Autumn was the one with the dreadlocks or the one with the nose ring.
Something neon pink shifted in the corner of my vision, and I saw Cherisse taking off her sweater and stretching like a cat in the tiny white T-shirt underneath. She giggled, then leaned over to squeeze Keats’s knee and whisper in his ear.
I could never flirt like that. Keats was smiling at whatever Cherisse was saying—and his grin was sly and handsome, like a fox, or a character from a Wes Anderson movie, or that fox character from that Wes Anderson movie, and at that moment, I would have given all my future birthday and four-leaf-clover and stray-eyelash and falling-star wishes to get someone like him to smile like that at me.
I would have given anything to finally be the one someone liked back.
I chewed on my lip—my worst, grossest habit—and glanced at Eph.
He was studying me, his eyes darting between Keats and me, like he knew something I didn’t. He raised an eyebrow.
“Nothing,” I said, digging in my bag for lip balm, trying to sound all casual and easy-breezy. “It’s nothing at all.”
Dark chocolate Kit Kat wrapper
Dark chocolate Kit Kat involucrum
New York, New York
Cat. No. 201X-2
Gift of Ephraim O’Connor
THAT AFTERNOON, I WAS EMERGING from the front doors of school, hugging my backpack straps against my chest, scanning the crowd for Keats, hoping to “bump into” him, when someone came up from behind me and belched loudly right in my ear.
I smelled Doritos.
Eph stood next to me, his favorite navy-blue knit hat on, straight brown hair tufting out underneath, cheesy orange residue around the corners of his shit-eating grin.
“Did you seriously just burp in my ear?”
He smiled bigger, shrugged, and purposefully chewed Doritos with his mouth open.
“Why would you do that to me? You’re disgusting. Apologize.”
“Come to the park with me.”
“Apologize.”
“Come to the park with me.”
I turned and started walking down the steps, not in the mood.
“Come on, Pen. It’s a perfect day to go to the park with a tall, handsome hottie. . . .”
His skateboard clattered against the concrete, and I heard the wheels whirring right behind me.
I ignored him, pointedly marching ahead.
“So what was up with you this morning? Your neck was kind of splotchy.”
Great.
Hands on my hips, I spun around. He jerked his board to the side to avoid running into me, skidded to a stop.
“Apologize.”
“Come to the park,” he said, giving me his winningest smile.
I frowned, and started walking up Central Park West again.
“I heard Joss is going to be more involved with the next